In order to get e-mail digests of your subscriptions (stuff you care about around the site) and notifications of private messages and bulletin board posts from your fellow users, you must validate your email. We also may send a newsletter periodically to update you on the goings on of the community. You can choose to receive any, all, or none of these by clicking the “My Profile” tab at the top of this page, then the “Edit Account” button at the top of that page.

If it has been more than fifteen minutes, check your Spam folder in your email client to ensure that it was accidentally quarantined. To resend your verification email, log in. On your logged in home page, if you have not verified your email you will see an alert next to your avatar that says, “Your email address has not been verified. Please click here to re-send.” If you’re experiencing additional issues, please contact us.

Head over to the login page. Below the fields to enter your username or email address and password, you’ll see a “Lost your password?” button. From there, you can send a password reset email which will include a link to change your password.

When you’re viewing your own Profile page, there is a button that says “Edit Account.” From there it’s very easy to reset your password, email address, and other account details.

Due to the high volume of requests we only change usernames for a fee. If you would like to change your username please follow these steps:

Choose a username that is at least 4 characters long and no more than 15 characters long. It should not have any characters that are not numbers or letters (no asterisks, exclamations points, etc).

Using the search bar above do a search for the username you’ve selected to make sure it is not already in use. On the search results page click the Users tab to see results for the username you are searching for.

Go to Paypal to make your payment by clicking here. In the comments filed on the payment page please give your current username and the desired username and a link to your profile.

Please allow up to 48 hours for the change to be completed. If your username has not been changed within that time period (excluding weekends) please email your Paypal receipt to [email protected] with a request to make the change.

Zip codes can help target relevant ads and other board features still in development. If you absolutely do not wish to provide your zip code, you may enter 00000. Providing your date of birth ensures that members are not minors. MDC is COPPA compliant, and we take children’s safety very seriously. Information such as your email address and birth date is always kept entirely private and confidential. Basic information such as overall general traffic demographics for the site may be shared with a third party, but we will never share your personal data. MDC is very protective of our members’ privacy, and we take great care to maintain confidentiality at all times. A general online privacy reminder: always be cautious when posting and sharing personal information on the internet.

We restrict the access to a small number of forums as a service to our established members. The restricted forums include Talk Amongst Ourselves, Parents as Partners, Swaps and The Commune. Co-ops, Talk Amongst Ourselves and Parents as Partners both require 60 days of membership and a minimum of at least 50 posts before access is granted. Members must have 6 months of membership and at least 150 posts before gaining access to the Swaps forum. The Commune is a private forum for MDC Premium Members only (Supporters and Advertisers). WAHMarket is a forum devoted exclusively to MDC Advertisers who share their websites, blogs, products and specials.

Advertising in discussion threads is strictly prohibited. We require that members not post to advertise their product, business, website or blog or in any other manner from which would bring financial benefit. Advertising in signatures is only permitted with a Signature Advertising Package. Information about acceptable board advertising may be obtained by contacting [email protected] MDC sales and fundraising information may be posted by administrators, moderators and designated members. Members may not use their business or product names or derivatives thereof as a username – whether for profit or not. Advertising may ONLY take place within your signature and the WAHM Market forums. Advertising posted elsewhere will be removeded and alerted. Only MDC Advertisers may display a business-related avatar.

A senior member is a member who has accumulated at least 1,000 posts. Senior Members are identified by a special Senior Member badge below their username. Once a member has reached 1,000 posts, the member can email [email protected] for a complimentary senior title.

There are countless stand alone discussion forums online as well as several prominent review engines and Wiki sites, but never before have these mediums for content generation been so effectively integrated as they are in our community. With so many options, which medium is appropriate for what type of content? While we believe it’s ultimately up to you to decide, here’s a bit of guidance.

First, forums, Wikis, product pages (and reviews of those) are all separate features and different ways you can interact with the site and its members. They are tied together across the site to make related information easier to find, but there are in fact many differences.

Type

What is it?

Suggested Use

Forums

ideal place for group interaction

here each user can start new threads, respond to existing threads and posts, etc.

Don’t forget to tag your threads and Wikis, so that it shows up on the appropriate product pages and other areas so that others can respond and contribute! Learn more about tagging in our Tagging Tutorial.

Of course! At any time, you can search all of the site, from discussion forums, to Wiki articles, from reviews to images. At the top of every page, you’ll see the search bar. Type in your keywords and click “Search.” You also can use the Advanced Search form to narrow down your search results. Learn more about using search in our Search and Advanced Search Tutorial.

Where is my forum signature?Signatures are located at the bottom of a member’s posts. Members may post up to three lines of text in their signature file. To edit your forum signature, navigate to your “My Profile” link which is located at the top of the page. Below your image gallery, you will see a section called “Your Forum Signature.” Below that is the “Edit Signature” button. Click Edit Signature, format your signature (text, bolding and italics only), and click save. For a visual tutorial, please go here. A new member’s signature becomes viewable after 7 days of participation and 10 posts. Our signature rules are located here.

Personalizing your community profile and adding items to Your List are two of the best ways for you to tell the rest of the community about yourself. Feel free to answer any or all of the profile questions, add items to your List, and change your avatar. Learn more about how to personalize your profile in our Community Profile Tutorial. Avatars may not contain business-related imagery or text without a current Advertiser’s package.

Our members create A LOT of content, but not all of it will be for you – that’s why you can subscribe to what’s interesting. You can subscribe to specific threads in forums, to individual wiki articles, or to tags, or users so you receive updates of all of their content.

One very powerful feature of the subscriptions is that you can actually subscribe to whole categories of products/content. You can just subscribe to a category tag and it’s as though you subscribed to every single item underneath that heading. Browse here to see what categories you can subscribe to.

We don’t want to inundate anyone, so you can determine the frequency with which you receive these updates. When you’re logged in, go to your profile and click “Edit Subscriptions” – here you can set the frequency of each subscription to Immediate, Daily, Weekly, or Never. Learn more about subscriptions in our Subscription Tutorial.

Of course – if you’re logged in and looking at your own Profile, each public message should appear with a “Delete” button underneath it. Clicking that link will delete the unwanted message immediately. Learn more about private messages and public messages with our Messaging Tutorial.

Tags are a vital component of our system – they are the means by which we can tie together the forum, wiki, review, product profile, and other content. Learn more about how tags work and how to use them in our Tagging Tutorial.

Most all content in the site has the option to rate or vote it up. This helps the best content rise up above the mediocre (or downright bad) content. Beyond that, you can flag or report a forum post or Wiki article with the “Report to Admin” button.

In the header, you’ll see the “Invite Friends” button when you are logged in. Simply enter their email addresses in the “To:” box (multiple email addresses separated by commas) and we’ll send off invites from you to your friends.

Only users in certain user groups are allowed to download attachments. If you received an error message that says “Sorry, you don’t have the required permissions to download attachments.”, then you are not in one of those user groups.

Your List is a way of organizing the items you Own, Want, and Had. When you want to add an item to Your List, simply go to that item’s product page, and click “Add to Your List.” You can create new lists from your user profile at any time.

Lists are a means to connect you with other members with similar interests and experience who you can hopefully learn from or at least enjoying talking to. We also compile everyone’s List data to provide you with unbiased statistics about what products the community is actually using. Learn more about editing Your List with the Community Profile Tutorial.

At any time, you can add a new item to the database. It is, however, very important that you don’t add a duplicate of something that we already have. If it’s just a different color of something else in the system, please don’t add it. If we really don’t have it and it fits within the existing categories, then go for it! Clicking the “Add Item” links throughout the site will prompt a wizard that will take you through the process of adding it to the correct product category. Check out a step by step guide to adding items with the Add A New Item Tutorial.

If you’re having browser problems, please check to see if you are using an A-Grade Browser. Our site performs optimally on the browsers listed in the A-Grade Browser Support Chart. To determine your browser, please go here.

Unfortunately, this is an issue with Internet Explorer 7 and 8. To deactivate this popover, you will need to change your browser security settings:

Go to Tools -> Internet Options.

Go to Security tab.

Select “Internet” zone, then click on “Custom level…” button.

Scroll down to “Scripting” section (at the bottom few).

Under “Allow Programmatic clipboard access” option, check or select (tick) Enable. Default action for this option is Prompt, which cause the pop-up message whenever there is any attempt to access the Clipboard.

Click Ok twice to exit from Internet Options.

Why can’t I right click and use Firefox’s spell checker?
Because we use a fully WYSIWYG (What you See is What You Get) editor, the right click is needed to be able to pull up image and table properties, cut and paste, etc. However, fear not. There is a work-around to be able to keep using it.

If you hold ctrl (PC) or Command (Mac) when you right click in Firefox, it will treat the right click as though it’s outside of the text editor.

This is an extra step for folks, but the idea was to provide the power of the context sensitive menus in the editor (to align images, add borders, color table cells, etc.) but also enable you to take advantage of Firefox’s spell check.

We would like to extend our deepest appreciation and thanks to MDC moderator fullofgrace who composed MDC’s original FAQ in 2006 and lovingly maintained it through November 2010. If you have a question that you would like to see addressed in our FAQ, please contact [email protected]